The business practices of Elsevier, the giant Anglo-Dutch publisher of more than 2,000 scientific, technical, and medical journals, have become the target of a boycott that appears to be gaining momentum

The American Society of Plant Biologists wishes to inform its membership; individuals and institutions subscribing to its two journals, Plant Physiology and The Plant Cell; and the scholarly community at large that it does not endorse the Research Works Act (RWA; H.R. 3699), which was introduced into the U.S. Congress late last year.

In November, OSTP issued two Requests for Information—one on Public Access to Peer-Reviewed Scholarly Publications Resulting From Federally Funded Research and the other on Public Access to Digital Data Resulting From Federally Funded Scientific Research. Today we are posting the public comments for those two solicitations and encourage you to take a look at what scientists, citizens, publishers, scientific societies, libraries and other stakeholders had to say.

Academic publishing is a very good game indeed if you can manage to get into it. As the publisher the work is created at the expense of others, for free to you. There are no advances, no royalties, to pay. The editing, the checking, the decisions about whether to publish, these are all also done for free to you. And the market, that’s every college library in the world and they’re very price insensitive indeed.

One of the greatest public goods our taxpayers fund is biomedical research. Findings from NIH-funded research are used day-in and day-out to help doctors make treatment and diagnosis decisions, to help health departments better allocate their resources to promote health and prevent disease, and to inspire new ideas for the next generation of medical breakthroughs.

The internet has transformed the nature of scientific research, opening up new ways to collect, use and disseminate scientific information. This has led to increased demand for access to such information. Open Access (OA) to scientific journal publications means making them freely available online, rather than charging readers to view them. OA to research data means making research data more widely available for re-use by others to support research, innovation and wider public use.

In a move that completes a year-long strategic restructuring of SPARC’s operations in Europe, Dr. Alma Swan has been appointed to the position of Director of European Advocacy, and Lars Bjørnshauge has been named SPARC’s Director of European Library Relations.